During the Great Depression, while the competitors were cutting costs and reusing outdated designs, Kress was expanding and building more elaborate stores than their previous ones. The architecture was referred to as an “emporium” evoking an elegant atmosphere more suited to a fine cloth or furniture store in New York rather than the five & dime stores dotting small town America. Many wonder what the driving force was behind these design decisions, especially during a national time of economic recession. Perhaps simply to outpace the competition, but perhaps more importantly Samuel Kress was an avid art collector and a proponent of public art enhancing a community. In this way the Kress legacy of the brand became more than a retail business, it became a symbol of small town civic pride.
S.H. Kress achieved a unique architectural distinction in both defining a brand identity while simultaneously fitting in with the five-and-dime market and the local main street character of each town. He was a pioneer in creating company brand identity through a “signature storefront”. He viewed his buildings as an advertisement and each store had some components that were standardized, reflecting the popular assembly line approach at that time, while other components varied based on the location to fit within each town culture.
In designing the buildings, the storefront is a key focus, with its large public doors, heavy use of glass, display windows, and entrance signage. Much like today, a storefront often serves as its own advertisement to pedestrians or drivers passing by and as such becomes a heavy focus for a store’s design. As in the case of the Kress stores they established their brand in a shiny gold handwritten font over a green back...
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...erfect atmosphere to convey speed, efficiency, and technology of the time. This open floor plan not only functions as an efficient visual element but also incorporates the idea of communal work. Customers, store leaders, associates, tech gurus etc. are all free to wander and work together without office walls or boundaries to separate them. The change in the use of light began during the Bauhaus era when lampshades which used to block light and create harsh separations were replaced with broad flood lights evenly spaced to create equal lighting throughout. The use of pure white walls and metal trim also make direct reference to the Bauhaus ideals. Likewise there is an egalitarian principle evoked in the designs. Built to human scale and made clearly for use by people rather than large monumental or overly scaled buildings that often promote power and authority.
In comparison to Sullivan's preceding office structures, like the 1891 Wainwright Building in St. Louis, Carson, Pirie, Scott in Chicago was expected to address its contributor’s demands in a very different manner. As opposed to accentuating the beehive of exact windows proposed to reflect the exact work occurring in each individual office, in the Carson Pirie Scott building, Sullivan displayed instead the secondary street level section and passage to persuade customers into the store. This was executed in various ways. The windows on the ground floor, exhibiting the store's merchandise, are much bigger than those above. The three entryways of the primary access were fixed within a rotunda on the corner of the building, so they are noticeable from all directions drawing nearer the building. The three primary entrances and the integrated base section are separated from the additional stories above by an undivided arrangement of elaborately baroque adornment. The cast-iron adornment incorporates the same exceptionally perplexing, fragile, natural, and floral motif that had become trademarks of Sullivan's pleasing
Over the years, the American department store has developed and evolved as not only a commercial business but also a cultural institution. While it has weathered many storms and changes since its inception and throughout history, its most predominant enemy has been a change in the lifestyle of the American people (Whitaker, 2013). As the customer’s needs and wants have shifted, department stores have struggled to keep up with demands. It has been argued that the decline of the department store has been ongoing for the last 50 years (Whitaker, 2013). This dissertation aims to understand how the department store has historically played a role in consumer culture and spending, and additionally, how this has evolved and changed in today’s retail market. Although department stores may not be able to take all the credit for inventing modern shopping, they certainly made its conventions and conveniences commonplace. They set a new standard for the way the consumer should expect to be treated, the type of services that should be provided, and the convenience that should attend the process of acquiring the necessities and niceties of life all in one place. They made shopping into a leisure pastime. This environment meant shopping was a means of freedom to look around, pick up objects with no obligations to buy. As one historian remarked, department stores: “encouraged a perception of the building as a public place, where consumption itself was almost incidental to the delights of a sheltered promenade in a densely crowded, middle-class urban space” (Whitaker, 2006). Although this perception and view of the department store has changed over the years, this paper aims to follow the trail of how and why that happened.
The branding Ms. Klein wrote about only appears to work because the idea of “choice” as defined by the brick-and-mortar retailers is an illusion. Anyone entering a department store or mall understands this quiet truth. There are many styles to choose from, it seems, b...
What is island life? what do you think of island life? My opinion of island life is a a place were you do what you want to do and with you you want to do it with.The book Lord of the Flies by William Golding and movie Castaway (2000) is directed by Robert Zeneckis. He similarly explores what happens to mankind when left stranded on an island without civilisation, rules and order. In Lord of the Flies a group of boys are left to themselves after experiencing a plane crash, leaving them alone on an island. Golding shows that evil desires, the basis of human nature is revealed when left to oneself. In Castaway it different compared to Lord Of The Flies because in castaway there is only on person stuck on the island while golding has a dozen.Composer achieves their unique perspectives by exploring civilisation, characterisation and through the theme ‘survival’.
The Great Gatsby, is beautifully written, and uses symbols effectively, drawing the reader in, and piquing their interest from chapter one to chapter nine. The use of color is most common in the novel, with the use of of many colors the author is able to subtly get his point across. Fitzgerald also uses locations like the Valley of Ash. Objects are used as a way to create mystery and suspense. The symbols help the reader understand the novel better by adding details that make the story more interesting.
Democratic is when citizens vote for all elected officials. Many had defied political system as it was, and thrived towards to create a democratic system that will be beneficial for America as a whole. Andrew Jackson was one of those individuals who challenged the government’s views, and whose name is tied closely to democracy. This essay will focus on the aspects that made this president so great and how democratic was he in actual fact.
“I'm a romantic; a sentimental person thinks things will last, a romantic person hopes against hope that they won't.” F. Scott Fitzgerald said this and it is very apparent that he feels this way in The Great Gatsby. In this novel filled with the experiences of a group of supercilious, rich, white people, Fitzgerald shows this with the many symbols he uses throughout the novel. Among the most arresting are the Green Light at the end of the Buchanan’s dock, which Gatsby envies for, the color white, which deceives readers with Daisy’s deceitful beauty, and the Eyes of T.J. Eckleburg, which sees all wrong done by the characters.
Many people, all throughout history, have aspired to create a perfect life for themselves. However, this dream is not often very easily available. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a novel about the decay of society, the blindness of love, and the pointless pursuit of the now non-existent American dream. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald shows the United States not in the glittering golden light that many claimed, but rather cast in a dark gloomy haze, polluted by crime, corruption, and moral decay. Fitzgerald also strikes down the notion that foolish love is harmless. Additionally, the author illustrates that the American dream is a now no-longer existent, and foolish pursuit. Many thought the roaring twenties were the height of American society, but they were actually just the beginning of a downward spiral.
It grew out of three phenomena. Firstly, dissatisfaction with the continued use of free forms and mix decorative elements used in the building from different architectural styles that bore little or no relation to the functions of the building. Secondly, to serve the rapidly in...
In America, it is becoming more difficult to achieve the American Dream. The American Dream is based on the idea that people can move higher up on the social scale, as long as they work hard work to accomplish their goal. The American Dream is also based on the belief that the social class you’re born into, is not the social class you have to stay in. In other words, everyone can move up in their lifetime if they work hard. However this is not true today, and people are not moving positively up the social class ladder. It has become a chain reaction of people with a college education vs. people without a college education. People with a college degree, or who have parents that have received a college degree, are significantly more likely to be in the upper class in America today, giving them an unfair advantage.
Fahrenheit 451 is a book about a society which is dependent on technology to a great extent. In the early 1950s, Bradbury, who was only germinating the idea for Fahrenheit 451, remarked of his anxiety about the role radio and television played in refining short attention spans. This is a story which alerts us of the multitasking danger.
Ron Johnson spent a great deal of time and money to promote his ideas of “stores-within-stores” by turning floor space into an area to house several branded boutiques. He did this in order to attract a target market of a wider demographic which includes age, gender, and generation. One of the m...
Goss argues that developers and designers of the built environment, specifically shopping centers and malls, use the power of place and understanding the structural layout of the space to boost consumption of the retail profits. Shopping centers are separated from the downtown area of shopping, either by distance and/or design. These establishments emerge for many to be the new heart and location for public and social life. In his article The "Magic of the Mall": An Analysis of Form, Function, and Meaning in the Contemporary Retail Built Environment, Goss also argues that the regulation of the spaces within the mall creates an atmosphere of "community" rather than one that is "public". This article’s main argument is that developers manufacture an illusion of doing more than just shopping when designing malls and shopping centers.
In the first year of my career, I worked in Benin and Nigeria as an operation coordinator supporting Chinese manufacturers in logistic and distribution management in Western Africa. Within a short period of time, I established a good relationship with local partners and started to crystallize a realization that a career in International Business was my real calling and the goal of my life is to change the image of Made in China products from cheap quality copycats to affordable good stuffs.
The Civil Procedure Rules recognised in Wales and England imposes a positive duty on the court to encourage parties to use an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) procedures if the court considers it appropriate, from the forgoing it could be inferred that achieving unbiased and objective dispute resolution is no longer the exclusive claim of the adversarial legal process as hitherto claimed by liberal societies. In addition, exact practices of adversarial legal system scarcely exist, since the daily life of court now involves routine departures from its original fundamental ideals. Nonetheless, growing evidence depict that mediated outcomes are more likely to be complied with than court decrees contrary to the position of pro adversarial advocates.